Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 994: Father and prince(3)

Alpheo sat back, the wood of his chair groaning under the sudden surrender of his posture. He turned his head away, staring into the flickering shadows of the corner to give his son the dignity of wiping his tears.

He drifted back through the years. Eleven years of marriage. Ten years of rule. It seemed only yesterday that he had turned his blade on his employer, seizing the city , not knowing what was to come next, all of his soldiers looking at him with wide eyes, asking: What now?

In all that time, he had guarded his past with more ferocity than his borders.

He looked at Basil, then thought of Jasmine and Rosalind. He saw the raw, open wound in his son’s expression and realized that the fortress had become a prison.

He reached for the skull-cup, draining the last of the wine to find the cold courage to utter words he had sworn would die in his throat.

Perhaps he truly was too drunk...after all, he had decided on doing it.

The moment he began to speak, the disappointment on Basil’s face vanished, replaced by a terrified, breathless wonder.

"I was a slave once."

He had said it.Done it.Uttered it. Mouthed it.

There was no retreating now; the bridge was burned, and the only path was forward. Wasn’t those his words?Never back, always forward...

"I have now lived three years more in freedom than I had in chains. I was but four summers old when I first felt the bite of the leash, not at the hands of a stranger, but shackled by my own father and mother.’’ He saw the awe in his son’s face, as he learned of his granparents sin.

’’A slave caravan rolled through our village during a winter so harsh the ground turned to iron. My parents looked at the grain they didn’t have and the children they couldn’t feed, and they sold me so they might live to see the spring.I was toiling back in my room making rope, when I had those same one I made a week ago laying in my room bound to my arms."

His mouth went dry, a desert but his cup was empty. He glanced at Basil, who stood as still as a statue, fearing that even a breath might shatter the fragile honesty of the moment. He decided for the moment to leave the cup on the table.

"I spent the next eleven years as the property of men who viewed my soul as an entry in a ledger. It was in my seventh year that I laid eyes on the people who are truly my blood. Yes... Egil, Jarza, Asag, Clio, Laedio, Edric, Rykio. We were all bound together under the Romelian lash. We were the refuse of an empire."

Alpheo leaned forward, his pale face illuminated by the dying candle. "The priests tell you that Hell is a place of fire. They are wrong. Hell is cold. It is a vast, frozen indifference. It wasn’t the hunger that broke men, nor the pain of the whip, it was the dehumanization. It was the slow, rhythmic grinding of knowing you own nothing, not even the breath in your lungs. You are less than a beast, for at least a beast is allowed its instinct. A slave is allowed only the whim of his master."

He looked at the skull on his desk, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Jarza was a hollow shell when I found him; the others were on the precipice of the abyss. Those bastards who held our leashes tried to break me, too. They wanted to see the spark die behind my eyes."

He reached for the wine urn, refilling the bone-cup with a steady hand.

"Never could. Instead, I was the one who broke them.Quite proud of that truth be told....

I worked through the dead of night to steal back the humanity they had stripped from us," Alpheo said, his voice a rasp that seemed to slow down the more he caught on the memories. "I stole grain from the masters’ siloes, scavenged for scraps in the filth, and whispered to the others every morning that they were still men. We were ghosts haunting our own lives until we reached the red sands of Arlania. It was there, beneath a sun that wanted us dead, that we finally found the price of freedom."

He brought the cup, the skull one, to his lips, his hands trembling so violently that the wine slopped against the bone. He could not look at his son; he stared instead at the far wall, seeing the shimmer of desert heat instead of stone.

"We swore it then. We mixed our blood into that burning sand and vowed that we would live, fight, and die as one for whatever wretched span of life we had left. We rose like a fever. We tore through the soldiers; we gutted the overseers with broken pots, stones, and our own bare hands.

We slipped and skidded on the entrails of men who had looked at us as mere ’things’ only an hour before. And in that slaughter, Basil... we were happy.

We were screaming with the ecstasy of a lifetime of stolen air finally rushing back into our lungs! We stabbed until our arms failed, and when we finally stood outside the gates, the world was wide, and we were free. Free at last!"

His eyes, usually so cold and calculating, caught fire with a brief, terrifying light. "Eight years of toiling on those sands, eating the offal those bastards deemed worthy of us. But they paid. By the Gods....they paid. The Emperor, the lords, that very empire, I watched them all rot. Now, the Emperor is meat in the dirt, and his sons are squabbling like dogs over the scraps of a dying empire. Where is his glory now? Where are the armies that would have marched for him? They are fertilizer for the weeds. I sent that fucker my regards in lead and steel, making sure his whole toil is set for the worms." 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

The fire in his gaze flickered and died, replaced by a gray, suffocating ash. The hatred that had sustained him for a decade suddenly collapsed into a crushing weight of guilt.

"We swore on those sands," he whispered, his voice breaking. "We did. We mixed our blood and promised we were brothers. And I threw it all away. I can rage against the Romelians until the sun goes dark, but what good am I? They treated us like objects, and in that shared agony, I found my brothers.

But I didn’t realize until it was too late that I had become no better than our masters. I took those boys, those men who had bled for me, and I gave them swords and called them ’Hounds.’ Gave them Legions, and made them feel as if they mattered for something.

I used them as my hunting dogs, dragging them into a cold, hell to fight for things they didn’t believe in, for a crown that only I asked for."

He finally turned to his son, and Basil saw the glistening tracks of tears cutting through the grime on the Prince’s face.

"Egil... he didn’t die with glory.Even if his was a noble sacrifice. He died shivering in the mud, his mind shattered by things no man should see. He was crying about a goat from his childhood, Basil.

A goat.

He didn’t even know where he was. He didn’t know who I was." Alpheo raised his right hand, the hand that had held Egil’s face as the life drained out of him. He stared at his palm as if he could still see those blonde hair. "I can still feel it. The coldness. It wasn’t the cold that killed him. It was me. I led him there. I used him until there was nothing left but a shivering ghost.

Want to know the worst?’’

Alpheo’s voice had lost its edge.He looked at the wine in the skull, but he didn’t drink. He just watched the red liquid tremble.

’’Egil never wanted any of it.But he came. He marched into that hell."

He looked at his son.

"He was there only for me. He was fighting for a side he wanted nothing to do with, solely to ensure that I remained safe. He walked into the jaws of death not for glory, not for Yarzat, but for the boy he had shared a chain with years ago. He gave me a love so pure that nothing holier ever existed."

His hand clenched around the rim of the skull, his knuckles white.

"And I wasted it. I took that love and I spent it like a common copper. I traded his life for a victory that tastes like ash. I watched him freeze, watched him lose his mind, and all for what? To sit in this dark room and drink from the head of a man who doesn’t even matter anymore except for the pain he caused in me?"

He let out a hitching breath, his shoulders finally collapsing.

"He loved me more than any man has the right to be loved, and I led him to his slaughter as if he were nothing more than a horse to be ridden to exhaustion.

I murdered the best part of myself, and I did it for....what?’’

He looked around as if searching for the answer. And he found one.

’’Worse than Judas.He at least got some silver out of it...’’